Amy Bishop murder trial now set for Sept. 10

Braintree native Amy Bishop’s triple murder trial in Alabama was scheduled to begin Monday. A judge there has rescheduled it while her attorneys make another appeal for advance payments for expert witnesses to testify about her mental state. Bishop is charged with shooting to death three University of Alabama in Huntsville colleagues in February 2010.

The Huntsville Times reported Monday afternoon that a Madison County circuit judge has approved a motion by Bishop’s defense attorneys to postponed the trial, which was originally set to begin Monday.

Her attorneys asked circuit court judge Alan Mann to delay the trial after the state appeals court declined to order the Alabama comptroller’s office to pay in advance for expert witnesses.

Mann had previously ordered the payments three times. Bishop’s attorneys say the witnesses are needed to make sure she has a fair trial. They’re planning to argue that she’s not guilty by reason of mental disease or defect. Her attornesy will now appeal to the state supreme court for the payments.

Bishop was arrested on the University of Alabama in Huntsville campus in February 2010, shortly after she allegedly shot to death three biology department colleagues and wounded three others. She’d been denied tenure months earlier. Prosecutors are seeking the death penalty.

After her Huntsville arrest, a Norfolk County grand jury indicted her for the 1986 shooting death of her brother Seth Bishop. That indictment followed an inquest ordered by then-District Attorney William Keating.